RIP Tony Benn

[callan]

This from Boris sums it up well
"'Tony Benn was a great democrat - even if his economic policies were eccentric. He once told me, the key question to ask anyone in power: "Who elected you - and how can I vote to remove you from office?"

I wonder if he asked Saddam Hussein that when he went to visit him.....I suspect not.

 

[dingleydangley]

I keep looking, but I can't find that quote of Tony Benn's about having to give up socialism when your wealth reaches a certain figure. It's almost as if people from all walks of life believe in a fair distribution of resources. For the record, I have been poor and now I'm not. The strange thing is, my views haven't changed.

 

[steveo]

I keep looking, but I can't find that quote of Tony Benn's about having to give up socialism when your wealth reaches a certain figure.

Turn it round and see if you can find anything about giving up your wealth to stay true to your politics.

There are plenty of tributes for Benn but its difficult to get away from his view of "I've got my money, now you should share yours"

And if you don't have an answer do what Cricko does, completely ignore the post. http://www.shrimperzone.com/vb/showthread.php?81108-RIP-Tony-Benn&p=1615336#post1615336

 

[Rob Noxious]

Turn it round and see if you can find anything about giving up your wealth to stay true to your politics.

There are plenty of tributes for Benn but its difficult to get away from his view of "I've got my money, now you should share yours"

And if you don't have an answer do what Cricko does, completely ignore the post. http://www.shrimperzone.com/vb/showthread.php?81108-RIP-Tony-Benn&p=1615336#post1615336

Steveo - you make it all so materialist. In this instance, we are talking of a man of principles. And pipes, too.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

B]]His diaries sold very well too.[/B][/B] I'd guess he probably was a millionaire. And as you say his house - in Holland Park - would have been worth a few quid.

Still, many leading politicians these days are. Cricko put up that link about the coalition millionaires, but I'm sure there are plenty in the shadow cabinet with a nice few quid to their name too.

I certainly recommend the last one:A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine.

A highly appropriate title too (in retrospect).

 

[Uncle Leo]

Interesting piece here from Matthew Parris in The Times. Sorry for the cut-and-paste job, but it's behind their paywall...



Benn’s beliefs were poisonous, Crow was a Luddite. The Left would have crippled Britain and the Right should say so

‘A magnificent writer, speaker and campaigner, with a strong record of public service,” said the Prime Minister yesterday on the death of Tony Benn, a deluded leftwinger who spent much of his life and endless guile working to turn Labour into some kind of East European socialist party.

But in old age, apparently, a national treasure. “An extraordinary orator, and principled man,” tweets the Tory Chairman, of the notorious old twister; “a man of deep socialist principle,” gushes the Commons Speaker. How long before even Arthur Scargill is obituarised as some kind of saint?

There is more to this nonsense than an old-fashioned reluctance to speak ill of the dead. Socialists, I sense, are credited with principle and public-spiritedness almost by default.

Bob Crow, the Luddite RMT union boss who died this week, was promptly soft-soaped with posthumous platitude: apparently he was “a fighter and a man of character” whose loss was “tragic”, according to Boris Johnson. Did Enoch Powell get this treatment from old enemies? Why do we who are not of the Left collude in rebranding hard-left bruisers and Marxist nutters as patriotic poppets? These rascals seldom return the compliment. Here’s how Boris Johnson’s “fighter and man of character” mourned another fighter: “I won’t shed one tear over her death . . . as far as I’m concerned she can rot in Hell,” said Bob Crow when Margaret Thatcher died.

I confess to slight stirrings of respect for the unsentimentality of the Left: not for Crow’s stupid opinion or Benn’s poisonous beliefs, but for their refusal to dissemble about people they thought bad for our country. Given their beliefs they were right to hate Margaret Thatcher. She would have hated them; in death as well as in life.

But enough of two wrongheaded men who would have dragged Britain on to the rocks if they could. They achieved nothing. The waters will now close over their heads. The more interesting question is why so many moderate Britons are reluctant to say what we really think about the dead icons of the Left?

We allow good manners to contribute to the mythologising of individuals who do big, bad things, hurt others, and leave our country worse than they found it. Most Conservatives felt uncomfortable at the Daily Mail’s attack on Ed Miliband’s Marxist late father, Ralph, for (as the paper alleged) “hating Britain”; but how much discomfort do the Left feel when writers in the Daily Mirror or The Guardian heap abuse of an often unashamedly personal nature on the memory of Margaret Thatcher, Sir Keith Joseph and other heroes of the Right?

Public figures should be publicly judged for the good or ill they do. Respect for a politician’s strength and stamina, love of opera, personal courtesy or kindness to small animals, should not smother one’s judgment of how his or her life scores on the only balance sheet that counts — the public good.

In world history many deluded leaders have been distinguished by their physical or moral courage, undoubtedly believing that they were serving those they led; and courage and courtesy are human qualities that can be displayed in the most appalling causes. Those on the Left have never shrunk from this truth; they don’t see politics as a game; they feel no sportsmanship towards those they think a danger to their version of progress.

The rest of us should learn from them. During the last century we have let a sort of lazy generosity lead to the lionising of figures of the British Left whose aims we did not support then and would not support now. Our country would be in better shape today if they had never lived, and we know it; but we murmur “hear, hear” when their names are praised.

We couldn’t begin to justify such sanctimonious cant, but we suppose it good form not to deride the Left’s kindly version of its own heroes’ lives. In failing to challenge these uncritical legacies, we’ve allowed myths to take shape that make a sensible reading of history harder to explain to younger generations.

Take Labour’s postwar Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. In the Commons, David Cameron has compared him with Margaret Thatcher as one of the four postwar prime ministers (said Mr Cameron) who “made the weather”. Heaven help us — Joe Stalin made the weather. Norman Tebbit, echoing Cameron in the House of Lords, praised Attlee and Thatcher as two prime ministers who “actually changed the country and did so in the way they wanted to change it”. And didn’t Pol Pot?

Attlee’s takeover of the coal and steel industries began a series of nationalisations that pointed postwar economic policy in wholly the wrong direction and helped to cripple our recovery. The entire economic philosophy of those who are (we coo) big figures in the history of British socialism has been abandoned as disastrous. So what’s all this guff about the great Clem Attlee?

The slow-burn catastrophe of putting health into the hands of a central state monolith was one of 20th century Britain’s most far-reaching mistakes. Do we find it hard to come to terms with the mistake because of misplaced deference to the “nobility” of their venture.

Well here’s the nobility of the Labour minister who brought it in, Aneurin Bevan, talking about the Tories: “We want the complete political extinction of the Tory party . . . So far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin.”

Demythologising the leaders of the Left in Britain since 1945 would be a useful first step towards thinking straight about modern political history.

Forgive Michael Foot his duffle coat, but not the way that he set his face against the reform of trade union legislation and undermined Labour’s brave moderates. Tony Benn was only latterly a favourite socialist uncle: more importantly he was a poisonous force for insanity in his party. Anthony Crosland is lauded as an intellectual: he was a destroyer of our education system. Just because death or old age has drawn their teeth, why hold back from putting the boot in to these people’s malignant legacy?

“As the Lady sees it,” the late Ian Gow (Margaret Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary) once told me, “when you’re crocodile-hunting and you’ve got the reptile beached on a sandbank, you don’t help it back into the deep. You stick the knife in.”

The prophets of 20th-century socialism are beached. Stick in the knife.

 

[GrumpyBlue]

Interesting piece here from Matthew Parris in The Times. Sorry for the cut-and-paste job, but it's behind their paywall...



Benn’s beliefs were poisonous, Crow was a Luddite. The Left would have crippled Britain and the Right should say so

‘A magnificent writer, speaker and campaigner, with a strong record of public service,” said the Prime Minister yesterday on the death of Tony Benn, a deluded leftwinger who spent much of his life and endless guile working to turn Labour into some kind of East European socialist party.

But in old age, apparently, a national treasure. “An extraordinary orator, and principled man,” tweets the Tory Chairman, of the notorious old twister; “a man of deep socialist principle,” gushes the Commons Speaker. How long before even Arthur Scargill is obituarised as some kind of saint?

There is more to this nonsense than an old-fashioned reluctance to speak ill of the dead. Socialists, I sense, are credited with principle and public-spiritedness almost by default.

Bob Crow, the Luddite RMT union boss who died this week, was promptly soft-soaped with posthumous platitude: apparently he was “a fighter and a man of character” whose loss was “tragic”, according to Boris Johnson. Did Enoch Powell get this treatment from old enemies? Why do we who are not of the Left collude in rebranding hard-left bruisers and Marxist nutters as patriotic poppets? These rascals seldom return the compliment. Here’s how Boris Johnson’s “fighter and man of character” mourned another fighter: “I won’t shed one tear over her death . . . as far as I’m concerned she can rot in Hell,” said Bob Crow when Margaret Thatcher died.

I confess to slight stirrings of respect for the unsentimentality of the Left: not for Crow’s stupid opinion or Benn’s poisonous beliefs, but for their refusal to dissemble about people they thought bad for our country. Given their beliefs they were right to hate Margaret Thatcher. She would have hated them; in death as well as in life.

But enough of two wrongheaded men who would have dragged Britain on to the rocks if they could. They achieved nothing. The waters will now close over their heads. The more interesting question is why so many moderate Britons are reluctant to say what we really think about the dead icons of the Left?

We allow good manners to contribute to the mythologising of individuals who do big, bad things, hurt others, and leave our country worse than they found it. Most Conservatives felt uncomfortable at the Daily Mail’s attack on Ed Miliband’s Marxist late father, Ralph, for (as the paper alleged) “hating Britain”; but how much discomfort do the Left feel when writers in the Daily Mirror or The Guardian heap abuse of an often unashamedly personal nature on the memory of Margaret Thatcher, Sir Keith Joseph and other heroes of the Right?

Public figures should be publicly judged for the good or ill they do. Respect for a politician’s strength and stamina, love of opera, personal courtesy or kindness to small animals, should not smother one’s judgment of how his or her life scores on the only balance sheet that counts — the public good.

In world history many deluded leaders have been distinguished by their physical or moral courage, undoubtedly believing that they were serving those they led; and courage and courtesy are human qualities that can be displayed in the most appalling causes. Those on the Left have never shrunk from this truth; they don’t see politics as a game; they feel no sportsmanship towards those they think a danger to their version of progress.

The rest of us should learn from them. During the last century we have let a sort of lazy generosity lead to the lionising of figures of the British Left whose aims we did not support then and would not support now. Our country would be in better shape today if they had never lived, and we know it; but we murmur “hear, hear” when their names are praised.

We couldn’t begin to justify such sanctimonious cant, but we suppose it good form not to deride the Left’s kindly version of its own heroes’ lives. In failing to challenge these uncritical legacies, we’ve allowed myths to take shape that make a sensible reading of history harder to explain to younger generations.

Take Labour’s postwar Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. In the Commons, David Cameron has compared him with Margaret Thatcher as one of the four postwar prime ministers (said Mr Cameron) who “made the weather”. Heaven help us — Joe Stalin made the weather. Norman Tebbit, echoing Cameron in the House of Lords, praised Attlee and Thatcher as two prime ministers who “actually changed the country and did so in the way they wanted to change it”. And didn’t Pol Pot?

Attlee’s takeover of the coal and steel industries began a series of nationalisations that pointed postwar economic policy in wholly the wrong direction and helped to cripple our recovery. The entire economic philosophy of those who are (we coo) big figures in the history of British socialism has been abandoned as disastrous. So what’s all this guff about the great Clem Attlee?

The slow-burn catastrophe of putting health into the hands of a central state monolith was one of 20th century Britain’s most far-reaching mistakes. Do we find it hard to come to terms with the mistake because of misplaced deference to the “nobility” of their venture.

Well here’s the nobility of the Labour minister who brought it in, Aneurin Bevan, talking about the Tories: “We want the complete political extinction of the Tory party . . . So far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin.”

Demythologising the leaders of the Left in Britain since 1945 would be a useful first step towards thinking straight about modern political history.

Forgive Michael Foot his duffle coat, but not the way that he set his face against the reform of trade union legislation and undermined Labour’s brave moderates. Tony Benn was only latterly a favourite socialist uncle: more importantly he was a poisonous force for insanity in his party. Anthony Crosland is lauded as an intellectual: he was a destroyer of our education system. Just because death or old age has drawn their teeth, why hold back from putting the boot in to these people’s malignant legacy?

“As the Lady sees it,” the late Ian Gow (Margaret Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary) once told me, “when you’re crocodile-hunting and you’ve got the reptile beached on a sandbank, you don’t help it back into the deep. You stick the knife in.”

The prophets of 20th-century socialism are beached. Stick in the knife.

What a nice fairminded article :sad:

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

What a nice fairminded article :sad:

Parris is (needless to say) an ex-Tory MP.

 

[GrumpyBlue]

Parris is (needless to say) an ex-Tory MP.

Yes I know

 

[Uncle Leo]

I felt that Parris piece was a welcome counter balance to much of what has been written about Benn. Parris abhorred Benn's politics, so why praise him to the hilt now he's dead?

The 'achieved nothing' comment is harsh, but as a more general point, it is worth noting that the British people didn't love Tony Benn that much. Labour never even elected him to be their deputy leader, never mind to run the whole show, and it is hard to imagine a Labour Party led by Benn ever winning a general election.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

I felt that Parris piece was a welcome counter balance to much of what has been written about Benn. Parris abhorred. Benn's politics, so why praise him to the hilt now he's dead?

The 'achieved nothing' comment is harsh, but as a more general point, it is worth noting that the British people didn't love Tony Benn that much. Labour never even elected him to be their deputy leader, never mind to run the whole show, and it is hard to imagine a Labour Party led by Benn ever winning a general election.

He failed to win the deputy leadership by the narrowest of margins when one of the major trade unions (can't remember which one)switched their block vote to Healey at the last minute.

Granted he was roundly defeated by Neil Kinnock in his leadership bid back in the 80's.

There were a couple of other extremely critical articles apparently in today's S.Times and Telegraph.

As Claire Short said (reviewing them on the Marr show):-"That's the way the British media works".Quite.:sick:

 

[Uncle Leo]

He failed to win the deputy leadership by the narrowest of margins when one of the major trade unions (can't remember which one)switched their block vote to Healey at the last minute.

Granted he was roundly defeated by Neil Kinnock in his leadership bid back in the 80's.

There were a couple of other extremely critical articles apparently in today's S.Times and Telegraph.

As Claire Short said (reviewing them on the Marr show):-"That's the way the British media works".Quite.:sick:

Her (and your) point being? There were - justifiably - a lot of articles heavily criticising Thatcher immediately after her death. I may be wrong, but I don't recall Claire Short speaking out against those.

 

[South Bank Hank]

Her (and your) point being? There were - justifiably - a lot of articles heavily criticising Thatcher immediately after her death. I may be wrong, but I don't recall Claire Short speaking out against those.

Exactly. I hardly think the British Media is non-critical of politicians when they're alive. In fact, it's their destructive agendas that have necessitated the spin-politicians we have now. Tony Benn was a man allowed to speak his mind in a way no politicians can these days.

RIP whatever his persuasion.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Her (and your) point being? There were - justifiably - a lot of articles heavily criticising Thatcher immediately after her death. I may be wrong, but I don't recall Claire Short speaking out against those.

Exactly. I hardly think the British Media is non-critical of politicians when they're alive. In fact, it's their destructive agendas that have necessitated the spin-politicians we have now. Tony Benn was a man allowed to speak his mind in a way no politicians can these days.

RIP whatever his persuasion.

The point being the British people/media build people up (even in death) only to pull them down again immediately afterwards.

It's a very British trait and we've seen it done with footballers (not often after death granted) loads of times.

Benn was mostly depicted as a nutter by the gutter press while he was alive, thus rendering his views inchoate.

 

[Uncle Leo]

The point being the British people/media build people up (even in death) only to pull them down again immediately afterwards.

It's a very British trait and we've seen it done with footballers (not often after death granted) loads of times.

Benn was mostly depicted as a nutter by the gutter press while he was alive, thus rendering his views inchoate.

Which I guess makes the views of Matthew Parris more credible. He didn't like Crow or Benn in life, so chose not to go down the hypocritical route of praising them in death.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Which I guess makes the views of Matthew Parris more credible. He didn't like Crow or Benn in life, so chose not to go down the hypocritical route of praising them in death.

Yes but personally I found Gary Younge's piece in today's Guardian much more credible.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/14/tony-benn-socialism-epitaph

 

[Hotman]

Idiot..http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ele...t-worth-1m--Lib-Dems-just-wealthy-Tories.html

If Vince Cable is worth less than a million, why the **** does anyone listen to him about how to manage our economy if he can't manage his own? And "business secretary"? All he's good for is typing up the notes I suppose...

 

[londonblue]

But if socialism is based on individuals not owning anything, why would he own a £3m house?

Also, he wasn't a WW2 veteran but a trainee pilot who lost his brother, also a pilot in 1944, which must have been tough and possibly shaped his view of war.

I think you're confusing socialism with communism.

 

[londonblue]

I felt that Parris piece was a welcome counter balance to much of what has been written about Benn. Parris abhorred Benn's politics, so why praise him to the hilt now he's dead?

You don't have to like someone's politics to accept that they're a person of principle and integrity.

I hated Thatcher's stance on just about everything, but I also accept she did what she genuinely thought was for the best.

 

[steveo]

I think you're confusing socialism with communism.

socialism
n
1. (Economics) an economic theory or system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are owned by the community collectively, usually through the state

Perhaps you could let me have your view of Socialism.